A Face In The Crowd
Morgan Rhoads wrote the book on soring horses. Literally. Last year, disgusted by what he says is the rampant practice of soring in the Tennessee walking horse industry, Rhoads penned and self-published From the Horse’s Mouth, a heartbreaking novel about the travails of a young walking horse. (Originally, he wrote under the pseudonym, Eugene Davis.) A part-time songwriter and horse trainer himself, Rhoads, 51, practically grew up on a horse’s saddle. His dad, Ray, trained and showed mostly walking horses starting in the 1940s, and Morgan quickly followed his lead. Born and raised in California, Morgan started training colts when he was only 8. Four years later, he began showing horses and, in fact, won the first competition he entered. But after 20 years of showing walking horses, Morgan and his father became disillusioned at how many of their competitors were soring horses. That’s the grim practice of applying a chemical or mechanical agent to a horse’s hoof or leg to get it to enhance its gait—thereby giving it a competitive advantage. So even while they were still winning most of their competitions cleanly, Morgan and his father left the industry entirely. Morgan moved to Nashville, became a songwriter, and now trains flat-shod gaited horses and quarter horses. He doesn’t train performance-class Tennessee walking horses because he says soring still prevails at just about any competition. Evidence would seem to bear him out. The USDA, which loosely monitors the industry, continues to cite successful trainers for soring-related infractions, including Bill Bobo, who won this year’s World Grand Championship at the Tennessee Walking Horse Celebration. Rhoads says that he recently walked into a barn of walking horses and saw 30 of them lying on the ground—a sure sign that they were in too much pain from the abuse to stand up. Wanting to shine a light on this practice, Rhoads wrote an imaginative novel about a promising Tennessee walking horse named Junior whose life as a show horse is a never-ending saga of soring, neglect and abuse. In the book, Junior and the other horses talk and have feelings, a plot device that works. Horse and animal lovers have delivered a hefty amount of praise on the novel. One vet says, somewhat sadly, that everything “I learned about the industry is in this book.” To order your own copy, log onto rhomanbooks.com or write the author at 1708 21st Ave. S., #146, Nashville, TN 37212.
—By Matt Pulle
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